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Beer Flies

I was in the Little Café Near Home, sipping tea, enjoying the midafternoon quiet. Eventually I finished what I was working on and decided to give myself a little pat on the back, pivo-style. I ordered the beer and turned to another project. Almost instantly there were tiny little flies buzzing around my drink, threatening to go swimming. Beer flies.

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7 thoughts on “Beer Flies”

We’ve had problems with fruit flies coming off of our bananas like never before. I dunno if our grocery store buys from a source with a penchant for fruit flies or what. One day one of us didn’t get around to finishing a glass of wine. Left on the countertop it turned into the perfect fruit fly trap. They love the wine and hundreds drown in it. Alas, it is only an academic exercise in revenge because hundreds more seem to breed on the bananas and keep buzzing the rest of the house.
On a different note, I remember my parents setting out little dishes of beer in the garden to trap and kill earwigs eating the plants. Bug Lite.

Thought #2: Yes, Jesse, beer is excellent at killing some sorts of garden pests. In addition to earwigs and other darkness- and moisture-loving insects, it does a number on snails and slugs. They love the stuff, but it kills them.

Thought #3: I learned when I was living in Houston that a beer required two coasters — one to put underneath to keep the condensation from the bottle or can from marring the furniture, and the other to put on top to keep flying insects out.

It seems that fruit flies are attracted to moderate amounts of carbon dioxide. The theory is that CO2 is an indicator that there’s food in the vicinity, in the process of going bad. Too much CO2 and the flies aren’t interested, because the fruit must be too rotten. But moderate amounts of CO2 tell you that the fruit’s there, and some of it is still good.

Actual Scientific Research has demonstrated that beer and soda fizz out about as much CO2 as a moderately ripe piece of rotten fruit.

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Sometimes I just have to declaw the spam and let it through. It’s not just the spam message that’s funny; it’s the context. I’m glad ol’ Georgeanna is now extremely certain on the subject of beer flies.